The spring came. My former ennui had disappeared, and in exchange I felt
the dreamy vernal sadness, woven of unknown hopes and unslaked desires.
But my life was no longer the existence I had led during the early
winter; I occupied myself with Sonia, with music, with studies, and I
often went into the garden, to spend a long, long, time in wandering
alone through the shady walks, or in sitting motionless upon some quiet
bench. God knows what I was thinking, what I was wishing, what I was
hoping! Sometimes for whole nights, especially if it was moonlight, I
would remain kneeling at my window with my elbows on the sill; morning
would find me there; and sometimes, without Macha's knowing it, I would
steal down into the garden again after I was in my simple night-dress,
and fly through the dew to the little pond; once I even went out into
the fields, and spent the rest of the night roaming alone about the
park.
Now it is difficult for me to recall, still less to comprehend, the
reveries which at this period filled my imagination. If I can succeed in
remembering them, I can hardly believe that these reveries were my own,
so strange were they, so outside of real life.
At the end of May, Sergius Mikaïlovitch, as he had promised, returned
from his journey.
The first time he came to see us was in the evening, when we were not
expecting him at all. We were sitting on the terrace, preparing to take
tea. The garden was in full verdure, and at Pokrovski nightingales had
their homes on all sides in the thick shrubbery. Here and there, large
clumps of lilacs raised their heads, enamelled with the white or pale
purple of their opening flowers. The leaves in the birch alleys seemed
transparent in the rays of the setting sun. The terrace lay in
refreshing shade, and the light evening dew was gathering upon the
grass. In the court-yard behind the garden were heard the sounds of
closing day, and the lowing of cows returning to their stable; poor
half-witted Nikone came along the path at the foot of the terrace with
his huge watering-pot, and soon the torrents of cool water traced in
darkening circles over the newly-dug earth of the dahlia beds. Beside us
on the terrace, the shining samovar hissed and sputtered on the white
cloth, flanked by cream, pancakes, and sweetmeats. Macha, with her plump
hands, was dipping the cups in hot water like a good housekeeper. As to
me, with an appetite sharpened by my late bath, I could not wait for
tea, but was eating a crust of bread soaked in fresh, rich cream. I had
on a linen blouse with loose sleeves, and my damp hair was bound in a
handkerchief.
Macha was the first to perceive him.
"Ah! Sergius Mikaïlovitch!" she cried; "we were just talking about you."
I rose to run in and change my dress; but he met me as I reached the
door.
"Come, Katia, no ceremony in the country," said he, smiling, and looking
at my head and my handkerchief, "you have no scruples before
Gregory,--I can be Gregory to you."
But at the same time it darted into my mind that he was not looking at
me precisely as Gregory would have done, and this embarrassed me.
"I will be back directly," I replied, drawing away from him.
"What is wrong about it?" he exclaimed, following me, "one might take
you for a little peasant girl!"
"How strangely he looked at me," I thought, as I hastened up-stairs to
dress myself. "At last, thank Heaven, here he is, and we shall be
gayer!" And with a parting glance at the mirror I flew down again, not
even trying to conceal my eager delight, and reached the terrace, out of
breath. He was sitting near the table, talking to Macha about our
business matters. Noticing me, he gave me a smile, and went on talking.
Our affairs, he said, were in very satisfactory condition. We had
nothing to do but to finish our country summer, and then we could go,
either to St. Petersburg for Sonia's education, or abroad.
"That would be very well, if you would come abroad with us," said Macha,
"but by ourselves we should be like people lost in the woods."
"Ah! would to Heaven I could go around the world with you," was the
half-jesting, half-serious answer.
"Well and good," said I, "let us go around the world then!"
He smiled and shook his head.
"And my mother? And my business? Come, we will let the tour of the world
alone, now, and you can tell me how you have passed your time. Can it be
possible that you have had the blues again?"
When I told him that I had been able, without him, to employ myself and
not to yield to ennui, and Macha had confirmed the good account, he
praised me, with the same words and looks of encouragement he would have
used to a child, and as if he had a perfect right to do so. It seemed to
me quite natural that I should tell him frankly and minutely everything
I had done that was right, and also, on the contrary, own to him, as if
in the confessional, whatever I had done that might deserve his censure.
The evening was so beautiful that, when the tea-tray was carried away,
we remained upon the terrace, and I found the conversation so
interesting that I only gradually became aware that all the sounds from
the house were ceasing around us. Upon all sides arose the penetrating
night perfume of flowers, the turf was drenched with heavy dew, the
nightingale in a lilac bush near us was executing his roulades, stopping
abruptly at the sound of our voices. The starry sky seemed to stoop
close above our heads.
What warned me that night had come, was the swift, heavy rush of a bat
beneath the awning of the terrace, and its blind, terrified circling
around my white dress. I fell back against the wall, and almost cried
out, but with another dull swoop it was off again and lost in the
blackness of the garden.
"How I love your Pokrovski," said Sergius Mikaïlovitch, interrupting the
conversation.... "One could linger for a lifetime on this terrace!"
"Well," said Macha, "linger!"
"Ah, yes! linger; but life--does not pause!"
"Why do you not marry?" continued Macha; "you would make an excellent
husband!"
"Why?" he repeated, smiling. "People long ago, ceased to count me a
marriageable man!"
"What!" replied Macha, "thirty-six years old, and already you pretend to
be tired of living?"
"Yes, certainly, and even so tired that I desire nothing but rest. To
marry, one must have something else to offer. There, ask Katia," he
added, pointing me out with a nod "Girls of her age are the ones for
marriage. For us ... our rôle is to enjoy their happiness."
There was a secret melancholy, a certain tension in the tone of his
voice, which did not escape me. He kept silence a moment; neither Macha
nor I said anything.
"Imagine now," he resumed, turning towards the table again, "if all at
once, by some deplorable accident, I should marry a young girl of
seventeen, like Katia Alexandrovna! That is a very good example, and I
am pleased that it applies so well to the point ... there could not be
a better instance."
I began to laugh, but I could not at all understand what pleased him so
much, nor to what it applied so well.
"Come, now, tell me the truth, 'hand on heart,'" he went on, turning to
me with a bantering air, "would it not be a great misfortune for you, to
bind your life to a man already old, who has had his day, and wants
nothing except to stay just where he is, while you,--Heaven knows where
you would not want to run off to, as the fancy took you!"
I felt uncomfortable, and was silent, not knowing very well what to say
in reply.
"I am not making a proposal for your hand," said he, laughing, "but,
now, tell us the truth are you dreaming of such a husband, as you wander
through your alleys in the evening, and would he not be a great
misfortune?"
"Not so great a misfortune ..." I began.
"And not so great a boon, either," he finished for me.
"Yes ... but I may be mistaken...."
He interrupted me again.
"You see?... she is perfectly right.... I like her honesty, and am
delighted that we have had this conversation. I will add that--to me--it
would have been a supreme misfortune!"
"What an original you are! you have not changed in the least!" said
Macha, leaving the terrace to order supper to be served.
After her departure we were silent, and all was still around us. Then
the solitary nightingale recommenced, not his abrupt, undecided notes of
early evening, but his night song, slow and tranquil, whose thrilling
cadence filled the garden; and from far down the ravine came for the
first time a response from another nightingale. The one near us was mute
for a moment, listening, then burst out anew in a rapture of song,
louder and clearer than before. Their voices resounded, calm and
supreme, amid that world of night which is their own and which we
inhabit as aliens. The gardener went by, on his way to his bed in the
orange-house, we heard his heavy boots on the path as he went farther
and farther from us. Some one in the direction of the mountain blew two
shrill, quick notes on a whistle, then all was still once more. Scarcely
a leaf was heard to move; yet all at once the awning of the terrace
puffed out slowly, stirred by a breath of air, and a more penetrating
perfume stole up to us from below. The silence embarrassed me, but I did
not know what to say. I looked at him. His eyes, bright in the darkness,
were fixed upon me.
"It is good to live in this world!" he murmured.
I know not why, but at the words I sighed.
"Well?" he questioned.
"Yes, it is good to live in this world!" I repeated.
Again the silence fell upon us, and again I felt ill at ease. I could
not get it out of my head that I had hurt him, by agreeing with him that
he was old; I would have liked to console him, but did not know how to
set about it.
"But good-bye!" he said, rising, "my mother expects me to supper. I
have hardly seen her to-day."
"I would have liked to play you my new sonata."
"Another time," he replied coldly, at least so it seemed to me; then,
moving off a step, he said with a careless gesture: "Good-bye!"
I was more than ever convinced that I had given him pain, and this
distressed me. Macha and I went with him, as far as the porch, and stood
there awhile looking down the road where he had disappeared. When we no
longer caught the slightest echo from his horse's feet, I began to walk
about the terrace and watch the garden, and I remained a long time
there, amid the heavy mist that deadened all the sounds of night, busy
seeing and hearing whatever my fancy chose to make me see and hear.
He came a second time, a third time, and the little embarrassment caused
by our strange conversation soon vanished, and never returned.
Throughout the whole summer he came to see us two or three times a week;
I was so accustomed to him that, when a longer time than usual passed
without his coming, it seemed to me painful to live alone; I was
secretly indignant with him, and thought he was behaving badly in thus
deserting me. He transformed himself for me, as it were, into a friendly
comrade; inducing the most sincere frankness on my part, giving me
advice and encouragement, scolding me sometimes, checking me when
necessary. But despite these efforts to remain always upon my level, I
was conscious that, besides all I knew of him, there existed within him
an entire world, to which I was a stranger, and he did not think it was
necessary to admit me; and this, more than anything else, tended to keep
up my feeling of deference, and at the same time to attract me towards
him. I knew from Macha and the neighbors that, besides his attentive
care of his old mother, with whom he lived, besides his agricultural
interests, and our guardianship, he had also on hand certain matters
affecting all the nobles, which caused him much trouble and annoyance;
but how he faced this complex situation, what were his thoughts, his
plans, his hopes, I could never discover from him. If I endeavored to
lead the conversation to his own affairs, a certain line appeared upon
his brow, which seemed to say: "Stop there, if you please; what is that
to you?" And he would immediately speak of something else. At first this
offended me, then I grew so accustomed to it that we never talked of
anything but what concerned me; which I finally came to think quite a
matter of course.
At first, too, I felt some displeasure, (while afterwards, on the
contrary, it had a kind of charm,) in seeing the perfect indifference, I
might almost say contempt, which he showed for my appearance. Never, by
word or look, did he give the least idea that he thought me pretty; far
from it, he frowned and began to laugh if any one remarked before him
that I was "not bad-looking." He even took pleasure in criticizing the
defects in my face, and teasing me about them. The fashionable dresses,
the coiffures, with which Macha delighted to adorn me on our holidays,
only excited his raillery, which chagrined my good Macha not a little,
and at first disconcerted me. Macha, who had settled in her own mind
that I was pleasing to Sergius Mikaïlovitch, could not at all comprehend
why he did not prefer that a woman whom he admired should appear at her
best. But I soon discovered what was the matter. He wished to believe
that I was not coquettish. As soon as I understood this there no longer
remained a trace of coquetry in my dress, hair, or manner; it was
replaced--usual and shallow little trick--by another coquetry, the
assumption of simplicity, before I had attained the point of really
being artless. I saw that he loved me: whether as a child or woman I had
not hitherto asked myself: this love was dear to me, and feeling that he
considered me the best girl in the world, I could not help wishing that
the delusion might continue to blind him. And indeed I deceived him
almost involuntarily. But in deluding him, I was nevertheless growing
more what he thought me. I felt that it would be better and more worthy
of him to unveil to him the good points of my soul rather than those of
my person. My hair, my hands, my face, my carriage, whatever they might
be, whether good or bad,--it seemed to me he could appreciate at one
glance, and that he knew very well that, had I desired to deceive him, I
could add nothing at all to my exterior. My soul, on the contrary, he
did not know: because he loved it, because just at this time it was in
full process of growth and development, and finally because in such a
matter it was easy to deceive him, and that I was in fact deceiving him.
What relief I felt in his presence, when once I comprehended all this!
The causeless agitation, the need of movement, which in some way
oppressed me, completely disappeared. It seemed to me henceforth that
whether opposite or beside me, whether standing or sitting, whether I
wore my hair dressed high or low, he looked at me always with
satisfaction, that he now knew me entirely; and I imagined that he was
as well pleased with me, as I myself was. I verily believe that if,
contrary to his custom, he had suddenly said to me as others did that I
was pretty, I should even have been a little sorry. But, on the other
hand, what joy, what serenity, I felt in the depth of my soul, if, upon
the occasion of my expressing some thought or letting fall a few words,
he looked at me attentively and said in a moved tone which he strove to
render light and jesting:
"Yes, yes, there is _something_ in you! You are a good girl, and I ought
to tell you so."
And for what did I receive this recompense which filled my heart with
joy and pride? Perhaps because I had said that I sympathized with old
Gregory's love for his little daughter, perhaps because I had been
affected to tears while reading a poem or a romance, perhaps for
preferring Mozart to Schuloff! I was amazed by this new intuition, which
enabled me to divine what was good and what one ought to like, though as
yet I had no positive knowledge of either. Most of my past habits and
tastes were displeasing to him, and a look or an imperceptible movement
of his eyebrows was enough to make me understand his disapproval of what
I was about to do; while a certain air of slightly disdainful pity,
which was peculiar to him, would at once make me believe that I no
longer liked what had formerly pleased me. If the thought of giving me
advice upon any subject, occurred to him, I knew beforehand what he was
going to say to me. He questioned me with a glance, and already this
glance had drawn from me the thought he wished to ascertain. All my
thoughts, all my feelings during that time, were not my own; they were
his, which suddenly became mine, penetrating and illuminating my life.
In a manner insensible to me, I began to see everything with other eyes,
Macha, my servants, Sonia, as well as myself and my own occupations. The
books which formerly I had read only in order to ward off ennui appeared
to me all at once one of the greatest charms of life, and for no reason
except that we talked, he and I, of books, that we read them together,
that he brought them to me. Hitherto I had considered my work with
Sonia, the lessons I gave her, as a painful obligation, only fulfilled
from a sense of duty; now that he sometimes came to assist at these
lessons one of my delights was to observe Sonia's progress. To learn an
entire piece of music had always seemed impossible, and now, knowing
that he would listen and perhaps applaud it, I thought nothing of going
over the same passage forty times in succession, poor Macha would end by
stopping her ears with cotton wool, while I would not consider the
performance at all tiresome. The old sonatas spoke out under my fingers
in a very different and very superior voice. Even Macha, whom I had
always known and loved as myself, seemed totally changed. It was only
now that I understood that nothing had compelled her to be what she had
been to us, a mother, a friend, a slave to our whims and fancies. I
comprehended all the abnegation, all the devotion, of this loving
creature, I realized the greatness of my obligations to her, and loved
her so much the more. He had already taught me to regard our people, our
peasants, our droroviés,[A] our men and women servants, in a totally
different light. It is an odd fact, but at seventeen years of age, I was
living in the midst of them a far greater stranger to them than to
people I had never seen; not once had it crossed my mind that they were
beings capable like myself of love, desires, regrets. Our garden, our
woods, our fields, which I had known ever since I was born, suddenly
became quite new to me, and I began to admire their loveliness. There
was no error in the remark which he so often made, that, in life, there
was but one certain happiness: to live for others. This had appeared
strange to me, and I had not been able to understand it; but the
conviction, unknown even to my own mind, was penetrating little by
little into the depths of my heart. In short, he had opened before me a
new life, full of present delights, without having in any wise changed
or added to my old existence, save by developing each of my own
sensations. From my infancy everything around me had remained buried in
a sort of silence, only awaiting his presence to lift up a voice, speak
to my soul, and fill it with happiness.
Often, in the course of this summer, I would go up to my chamber, throw
myself upon my bed, and there, in place of the old anguish of the
spring, full of desires and hopes for the future, I would feel myself
wrapped in another emotion, that of present happiness. I could not
sleep, I would get up and go and sit on the side of Macha's bed, and
tell her that I was perfectly happy,--which, as I look back upon it
to-day was perfectly needless; she could see it well enough for herself.
She would reply that neither had she anything more to wish for, that she
too was very happy, and would embrace me. I believed her, so entirely
natural and necessary did it seem to me for every one to be happy. But
Macha had her night's rest to think of, so, pretending to be angry, she
would drive me away from her bed, and drop off to sleep; I, on the
contrary, would lie for a long time running over all my reasons for
being gladsome. Sometimes I would rise, and begin my prayers a second
time, praying in the fulness of my heart that I might thank God better
for all the happiness He had granted me. In my chamber all was peaceful;
there was no sound save the long-drawn regular breathing of the
sleeping Macha, and the ticking of the watch by her side; I would return
to bed, murmur a few words, cross myself, or kiss the little cross
hanging at my neck. The doors were locked, the shutters fast over the
windows, the buzzing of a fly struggling in a corner came to my ear. I
could have wished never to leave this room; desired that morning might
never come to dissipate the atmosphere impregnated with my soul, that
enveloped me. It seemed to me that my dreams, my thoughts, my prayers,
were so many animated essences which in this darkness lived with me,
fluttered about my pillow, hovered above my head. And every thought was
his thought, every feeling his feeling. I did not yet know what love
was, I thought that it might always be thus--that it might give itself
and ask nothing in return.